


If We Could Start Over

by IntotheStarkerVerse (IntotheStarkerverse)



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: Endgame Complaint, Fix-It, M/M, Not FFH compliant, Peter Parker Needs a Hug, a/b/o dynamics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-20
Updated: 2019-07-20
Packaged: 2020-07-08 23:18:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,463
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19877728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IntotheStarkerverse/pseuds/IntotheStarkerVerse
Summary: For Starker Week Day Five's Prompt:  Fix-It.An Endgame Compliant / FFH Non-Compliant Fix that marries aspects of the FFH previews with a / b / o dynamics to give Starker the happily ever after they deserve...





	If We Could Start Over

**Author's Note:**

> Author’s Note:
> 
> This is a Fix-It only in terms of the Starker fandom. It will provide for a happily ever after for Tony and Peter, but that is all that I will promise. The idea for this story came from the previews for Far From Home. Because the movie we were teased is not, necessarily, the movie we received (not that I didn’t adore it, because I did…it just got me thinking about what *might* have happened)…Therefore, this is not at all Far From Home compliant. There will also be elements of a/b/o in this particular story and it is my first time writing in this sub-genre, so please forgive me if there are inaccuracies or my premise is…far-fetched.
> 
> I had only planned this as a one-off for Starker Week, but if this is something that other people actually enjoying reading, I could definitely be convinced to revisit this Fix-It more in the future because I have every much enjoyed writing it.

* - * - *

The world seemed strange and far away.

Feeling returned gradually, like the whisper of a thousand arachnid legs crawling up his skin, the Peter felt his finger tips and toes, his feet and hands, his arms and legs. Slowly. Slowly. Sounds filtered into his ears, the volume gradually increasing as if someone was only just turning up the dial. He could feel the sensations of impossibly soft cotton sheets draped over him, hear the sound of medical equipment beeping near the head of his bed. He could smell the clinical odor of hospital disinfectant and he knew without even opening his eyes that something terrible must have happened.

Groaning, he concentrated all of his strength on opening his eyes and was greeted by the sight of dry wall ceiling tiles and rectangular florescent lights in a grid above his head. He tried to push himself up, to get a better look at the room, but the tubes and wires on his arms held him awkwardly in place.

“Hey, hey kid, take it easy, there.”

The voice came from all around him, at once both familiar and terrifying.

“Muh…Mr. Stark?” Peter’s own voice sounded childish to his ears, high pitched and hopeful. Was it really him? It couldn’t be him. He was dead.

“I’d say the one and only, but in light of recent events…it would be in poor taste…”

Peter was once more trying to sit up, trying to find the source of the voice. Frustrated and frightened, he yanked the tubes from one arm and finally shoved himself into a seated position.

“Hey! Now what did I say about taking it easy?”

Finally, he saw him. It certainly looked like Mr. Stark. He stood behind a glass partition a few feet from the end of Peter’s bed. In fact, his entire hospital room seemed to be constructed of glass walls that sectioned off him off from a larger room…with what looked like an airlock at the door. “Am I in quarantine?”

Mr. Stark looked from Peter to the door and back again with a chuckle. “Yeah…let’s call it quarantine for now. It’s easier. I take it that you don’t remember how you got here?”

Peter shook his head slowly. 

“You will. Doc says I can’t overload you with too much information at one time. Something about shock, I don’t really know. Biology was never my thing. Psychology either. Just…leave the tubes alone and try to rest, okay? The memories’ll come back, and when they do…we’ll talk through them.” Mr. Stark gestured to a row of chairs along a distant wall. From the looks of the rows of empty coffee cups and discarded single serve vending machine snacks, it appeared that Mr. Stark had been there for quite some time already. “Not going anywhere. Just…try to rest and don’t push yourself.”

Peter wanted to argue, wanted to demand answers, but in the end he could do little more than fall limply back against the bed and give in to his body’s overwhelming need to rest.

* - * - *

Mysterio.

Multi-verses.

Magic.

It all came back in a succession of intersecting night terrors. No sooner did Peter think he’d awoken from his dream than he discovered that he’d stepped into another nightmare. Each one unlocked pieces of the puzzle. Each one was darker and more horrifying than the last.

He remembered his European field trip with MJ and Ned.

He remembered the appearance of Hydro-Man, Nick Fury and Mysterio.

He remembered fighting alongside the wizard, believing him, trusting him…

He remembered the betrayal.

He remembered the realization that Mysterio was going to destroy everything, everyone, and there was no else to fight him.

Peter had tried. Tried with everything he had, but in the end, it hadn’t been the fighting that mattered at all.

“You want to save your world, Spider-Man?”

Peter was battered, bruised, shaken to his core and running short on tricks he had not already tried a half dozen times. “What do you want, Mysterio?”

The older man chuckled softly, stepping forward with a dramatic wafting of his majestic cape. He reached out with one gloved hand to take Peter’s chin in his fingers. “Oh, that’s really very simple, Peter. It’s what I’ve wanted all along. I wasn’t lying when I told you that my world could use a hero like you…we could. Because we had one and we lost him. It’s a familiar story, I think. Thanos came. He took the Infinity Stones. He snapped away half of our world. Not me, though. Not our Spider-Man, either. We spent five long years trying to find a way to bring back those lost, to save the universe…and in the end, we succeeded, but at the cost of Peter’s life. See…I wasn’t willing to accept that. I loved him. The minute he died, I knew I’d do anything to get him back. I started searching the multi-verse, looking for that alternate Peter who was just like mine. I was almost giving up hope until I found you…I’ve been watching you Peter. Watching you for months, and you’re perfect. Come back to my world with me, and everyone and everything you love will be safe. Refuse…and the Elementals will rip your world to shreds.”

It was strange to think that in some alternate world he had made the same sacrifice that Mr. Stark had, that there might be shrines up to celebrate Spider-man, that a world might owe its existence to him. Well…now there would be two, because he couldn’t refuse Mysterio at the cost of the world that Mr. Stark had given everything to save. He had to go. He had to surrender. He had to make things right…

He barely recalled the trip through the Multiverse. There had been glimpses of other worlds, other Spider-people (and not people), but every step of the journey was colored by Mysterio’s magic and the horrible pain that accompanied it. He had no idea what Mysterio was doing, or why, and what was worse…he didn’t have the energy to demand answers.

* - * - *

Peter woke again to find Mr. Stark sitting in a chair that he’d dragged to the glass so that he could sit in Peter’s line of sight and be the first thing he saw upon waking. Groggily staring across the room at him, Peter scrubbed at his eyes and tried to speak. His throat and voice felt raw….

“You did a lot of screaming. Nightmares. I get it, believe me…I get it. Just…don’t try to force your voice too much, okay? I’ll send for one of the nurses to get you some tea and honey.”

Peter nodded, shifting a little to pillow his head on his arm. “How did I get here? Where is Mysterio? Are you the Mr. Stark of his world?”

“I said go easy on your voice, Parker, not play a rousing game of twenty questions. But yeah…we don’t really like to think of his as Myserio’s world. You might have some idea why…” Tony’s voice trailed off as he leaned forward to rest his forearms against his knees and get as close to Peter as he could without breaching the glass quarantine barrier. “As far as how you got here…I got you out. I knew Mysterio was planning something. I have protocols set up all over the planet to monitor for spikes in electromagnetic fields that suggest a breach in the multiverse. I knew when he brought you here…and I knew I had to get you away from him.”

“Why? He said…he said your Peter was in love with him…”

Mr. Stark visibly tense, nostrils flaring and dark eyes growing almost inky black with fury. The muscles of his jaw clenched and unclenched for several seconds before he shook his head. “No. No. Peter was never in love with that maniac. He worked with him to get us back after Thanos…but it was Myserio who was obsessed with him. Thought they had something ‘special’. Something ‘meaningful.’ They didn’t. Peter was never in love with him.”

There was something in the way Mr. Stark said that last ‘him’ that made Peter consider his words and his actions more carefully. Mysterio had suggested that he and the Peter of this world were not that dissimilar. So, Peter had to know. “Than who did he love?”

Mr. Stark’s expression shifted in an instant from one of fury to one of such indescribable grief that Peter knew without a single word spoken just who Peter had loved and that the love had not be unrequited.

“It’s okay. You don’t…you don’t have to talk about it.”

“No, kid, you’re wrong there. I have to talk about it. Just…not now. I need an okay from the doctors first. But soon. Very soon.”

* - * - *

Doctors came and went at all hours of the day and night. They conducted all kinds of strange tests, some which made no sense to Peter at all. He didn’t understand what they were looking for, especially since after the second day of his quarantine…he felt almost normal. There was something strange he couldn’t quite put his finger on, but he didn’t feel sick or injured and his powers all appeared to be working as they should.

The only thing that kept him sane was Mr. Stark. It wasn’t his Mr. Stark. He had to keep telling himself that, but everything about him seemed so…familiar. Same wit. Same charm. Same self-deprecation. They spent hours talking, comparing stories, sharing grief. Something in the tone that Mr. Stark used to talk about his Peter made the boy think that he was leaving out important details, but he didn’t press the issue. He understood that sometimes there were things that were just too painful to talk about.

On the fourth day, Peter began to grow truly restless.

“How long do I have to stay in here?” He was getting claustrophobic.

That day, Mr. Stark had been ducking out of the room from time to time when Peter was awake, taking phone calls or speaking with doctors. He always returned with a look of extreme guilt on his face, but he would never answer Peter’s questions about what was actually going on. “We’ll let you out as soon as we can. It’s for your own safety more than ours.”

“Is it to protect me from Mysterio?”

Mr. Stark grimaced, “Not really. Mysterio is gone. We got help from a friend of yours…a Doctor Strange? He helped us introduce Mysterio to a place called the Dark Dimension. According to Doctor Strange, he is as good as dead…or maybe suffering a fate worse than death? Not clear on that part.”

“If Doctor Strange was here, why didn’t he take me home?”

Mr. Stark’s eyes widened for a fraction of a second, clearly realizing that he had made an error in judgment by mentioning Doctor Strange. Scrubbing a hand over his face, he let out a sigh. “You can’t go back because Myserio did a few things to you, Peter…things that will make it very hard, if not impossible, for you to live in your world. Things we can’t undo, because apparently undoing a dead wizard’s spells is not a thing…I don’t really I know. Hocus pocus isn’t my area, either.”

Peter was barely listening to the last part of his statement. “He…did something to me? What did he do?” Peter felt panic rising in his throat. His breath was coming in short gasps, his vision was turning black around the edges, his hands were shaking in his lap. “What did he do, Mr. Stark? Is that why I’m in here? Am I ever going to be able to come out?”

“Hey! Peter, kid, take a deep breath. Count to ten. Come on, you’re going to pass out…”

Peter wasn’t listening, he wasn’t hearing or seeing anything, he was confronted by the realization that he was never going to see his friends or May again, and he didn’t know if he could survive that truth, not after thinking that his freedom from Mysterio meant he could go home. “What did he do, Mr. Stark? What did he do?” He kept repeating those two questions in a voice whose pitch and volume were growing exponentially greater with each repetition.

Peter could see Mr. Stark through the veil of his tears, watched the man’s anguish and indecision before he bolted for the airlock. Peter heard the door’s pressurizing and depressurizing and after several seconds, he felt someone join him on the bed and pull him close.

There was something about the smell of Mr. Stark’s cologne that was intoxicating. Peter breathed it in deep breaths, letting the warm tones of sandalwood and clove fill his lungs. Almost instantly, Peter felt himself calming. Mr. Stark pulled him close to his chest, fingers stroking through Peter’s chestnut curls as he murmured soft reassurance. Peter could never recall a moment when he felt so safe, so cared for. 

“I’m sorry, Peter. If I’d known what Mysterio had planned I would have stopped him. I didn’t get there in time. But I’ll take care of you. I promise.”

“You still haven’t told me what he did, Mr. Stark…”

Mr. Stark sighed, “I know.” He dipped his head, pressing a kiss to Peter’s hair and breathing in deeply. “God, you even smell like him… Pete, before I can tell you what he did, you have to understand something.”

“What?”

“I know it might be hard, kid, but I really need you to call me Tony. That Mr. Stark thing, it’s killing me.” Peter gave a small nod, he really would at least try to do as Tony asked, even if it felt…strange. “The Peter Parker of this world…” Tony started and then stopped, his voice choked with emotion.

“You were the one he loved.” Peter wasn’t asking a question. He just knew. “I…I had a crush on my Tony for a long time. We never…he never really saw me as anything but a kid, but I loved him. If we were that much alike, I guess he probably loved you, too.”

Tony gave a bitter chuckle, “We loved each other, Peter. I waited my whole life to find my soul mate and when I finally found him…I had to wait even longer to make him mine. Then Thanos came along and I lost years with him…then I lost him completely.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry, too, Pete. I’m sorry you lost your Tony and never even had the chance to have what we had…” His voice trailed off again as his fingers stroked softly through Peter’s curls. “Mysterio changed your biology, Peter. Humanity in this world…they evolved differently. He made you compatible with us…”

“How?”

Tony sucked in a deep breath, letting it out slowly as he adjusted Peter a little in his lap so that he could see the boy’s face and he could see Tony’s. “Here, there’s something called secondary gender…”

Peter sat motionless through the mind-bending anatomy lesson, watching Tony through hooded eyes, his expression shifting from confusion to disbelief to horror and shaky understanding. It all seemed so strange. So alien. So unlike anything he’d ever even dreamed could be possible. “Peter was…”

“An Omega.”

“But you said they were weak and small and subservient…”

“They were. For a long time, they were. That’s all that society thought they could be. And then the dawn of superheros saw some of them joining Alphas and Betas in protecting our world from threats. When Spider-Man, a known Omega, sacrificed himself to save the universe…the world accepted that Omegas were capable of much, much more than they ever gave them credit for. He changed the world in more ways that he will ever know.”

“Then…what am…what am I?”

Tony paused, lips pressed together in a little line before he answered. “An Omega, just like my Peter.”

That hit Peter hard. He felt winded, his mind spinning with everything he’d been told about heats and fertility and child-bearing. “So I can…I can get…pregnant? And I’ll go into heat like a house cat?”

Tony stifled a soft chuckle. “Yes, Peter. But there are suppressants and blockers and birth control. You won’t have to experience anything you don’t to experience. I promise you, I’m going to take care of you.”

Peter did not look entirely convinced, but he nodded and fell silent as he stared down at his hands in his lap. “So you’re…an Alpha, then?”

“Yes.”

“Is that why…why you smell so good?” Better even than his Tony had ever smelled. “I thought it was cologne…”

“No, Pete, not cologne. Do I though? Smell good to you.”

“Mhm. I smelled it when you first came in…” He tipped his head, following the smell to its source at Tony’s neck where he unceremoniously buried his nose against the warm skin and inhaled it deeply.

Tony looked both heartened by this news and concerned. “That’s why we had you in isolation. You may be used to heightened senses as Spider-Man, but you weren’t susceptible to pheromones before.”

“Pheromones,” Peter repeated the word almost drunkenly. “Does everyone smell good like you?”

“No. At least…I hope not. We’ll introduce you to others slowly, Pete. Let you find out. The doctors are already looking for the right medications to make your transition easier. I promise you, I’m going to make this as okay as I can. You can’t live in your world anymore, Pete, but you can still visit. When we get you settled, I promise I’ll find a way for you to visit your friends and your family there. I will make your life everything you need it to be, Peter if I have to rewrite the laws of physics to do it.”

“I believe you, Tony.” He sounded sleepy, snuggling against Tony’s chest and relaxing as a result of Tony’s effort to release relaxing pheromones.

* - * - *

It was not an easy transition. Peter was slowly introduced to Beta nurses and doctors without their biohazard suits. He began to learn the meaning of certain smells and his own body’s reactions to them, but no one perked his body’s interest like Tony did. 

A few Omegas were brought in next. They spent days with Peter helping him to learn the magical metamorphosis that had over taken his body. They were kind and gentle and encouraged him to cry when the changes seemed too much or too frightening. They taught him about scent blockers and heat suppressants and birth control. One even told Peter about his own experiences with pregnancy and childbirth. 

One thing, though, still troubled Peter. “Do all Alphas smell as good as Tony?”

“How does Tony smell to you?”

“Warm and safe and happy. I’m scared and sad and angry all the time, but not with him. Is it…is it just the pheromones?”

“Possibly, but maybe not. Has anyone talked to you about mates?”

“Yeah…”

“True mates?”

“No.” Peter had no idea what that was.

The Omega nodded, sitting beside Peter on the bed. “Well, they’re Soulmates. Sort of…predestined to be together. It’s rare. Most people never find their True Mate, or they never have one to begin with. Fairy Tales say there’s an instant connection and the two people…they just know. Iron Man and Spider-Man were True Mates so, if you’re an alternate version of Spider-Man, and if Mysterio was trying to make you just like our Peter…than, it’s possible, I guess, that you could be Mr. Stark’s True Mate as well.”

That gave Peter pause.

It wasn’t his Tony.

His Tony was dead.

He didn’t know if he wanted to be a replacement for a Peter that was just as dead as his Tony.

And yet…there was something to be said for the way Tony had taken it upon himself to take care of him. He’d saved him. He’d been there for him for days without a single complaint. He was working on inventing inter-dimensional travel at that very moment so Peter could visit May and Ned and MJ. He was kind and caring and strong and brave…and more than anything else, he understood. He knew what it was like to be snapped away, to return to a world that moved on without you and to struggle to find your place in it again. He knew what it was like to lose the one who loved. He knew what it was like to live in the shadow of their memory.

“I want to know more about mating and…what did you call it, claiming bites?”

**Author's Note:**

> Don't worry, I have not forgotten 'Time of Our Lives' and am hard at work on the final installment. I am just taking a little time off to partake in the prompts for Starker Week!
> 
> Follow me on tumblr: @intothestarkerverse

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [To the Other Side](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20463302) by [RavenWolf48](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RavenWolf48/pseuds/RavenWolf48)




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